Essays Inspired by Wanderlust
In the sixth of the 66 essays in this book, written when she was 33 years old, Angela Long begins by giving us a long list…
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There lived a hobbit…
If you think you’ve also got the chops, YAC is holding auditions for each of these roles on April 17 and 18.
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the Year 2026 — Breaking the chains
Since the dawn of publishing, the written word has caused quite a stir: words are dangerous; readers, a threat…
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Santa’s Magic Key
Theresa Gatien, a Whitehorse- and Atlin, B.C.-based author, will be signing copies of her new children’s book in Atlin and in Whitehorse.
A Proper Dawson Send-off
Writers-in-residence at Berton House have only two responsibilities, aside from being inspired by the place. They are to do public readings.
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My Baby ‘Loves A Bunch Of Authors’
Susan confesses her addiction for reading in our latest Grey Matters column and talks about not just classic books but new technologies to read with
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An Afternoon Snapshot Of Audrey McLaughlin
Kim has a lovely afternoon tea and conversation with our own Audrey McLaughlin about her impressive career and her retirement
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A Paranormal Mystery
In the summer of 1997, Andrew Pyper stayed at Berton House. It was his first taste of the North and he was hooked.
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‘Flipping Through’ A Yukon Summer
During the summer, you want to experience the beauty and fun of each page, so flip through the pages slowly to savour moments and memories
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Fractured By Karin Slaughter
Dan Davidson reviews Karin Slaughter’s book Fractured, the second in a twelve part series about Georgia investigator Will Trent
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The Winds Over Whitehorse
Eagle Hill Energy Limited Partnership (EHELP) and Kwanlin Dün First Nation (KDFN) are excited to announce the release of…
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The BC and Yukon Book Prizes
The BC and Yukon Book Prizes were first established in 1985, and continue today in their mission to celebrate the achievements…
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Well-Read And Well-Loved
Books can have long lives. They might be bought new and kept forever, or they might be loaned to a friend and are never seen again.
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Love Gone Wrong In The Yukon
Pity, that is the first feeling I get while reading Nadine Sander-Greens coming-of-age novel, Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit…
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Kim Hudson Launches Her New Book, The Bridge
Kim Hudson’s highly-varied background looked like indecision in the beginning, but she says it has turned out to be a rich resource…
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Blue Camas, Blue Camas
Blue Camas, Blue Camas is a new children’s book, written by Danielle S. Marcotte and illustrated by Alyssa Koski…
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Hot Takes From Peter Jickling
Peter Jickling was part of What’s Up Yukon’s editorial team from 2012–2015, during which he wrote a weekly column…
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Tales From Before And After The Gold Rush
The extreme focus on the drama of the Klondike Gold Rush tends to obscure the stories about the gold seekers…
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Kids Write 4 Kids
Ripple Foundation, a national youth-education charity with a goal of cultivating the next generation’s creative literacy skills…
Having Fun With Animal Names
I don’t know about other languages, but English tends to have names for groups of creatures. These are called collective nouns…
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The Never-Ending Bedtime
Every night, at the same time, we begin our toddler’s bedtime routine. And, honestly, more often than not, things tend to go pretty smoothly.
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There Is Much to Savour In This Memoir
This book tests my understanding of the word calamity, which is usually defined as “a state of deep distress or misery.”
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Books To Read On A Trapline
When the evenings get longer, we enjoy reading a good book. So here we go with the books to hunker down with on a cold, dark night
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The Simple Joys Of Yukon Count
This past Christmas season, Yukoners were introduced to a new children’s book created by local illustrator Tedd Tucker.
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A Yukon Mosaic
Eleanor Millard’s story is a familiar one. She came to the Yukon in 1965 and got captured. She has mostly been here since…
River Meets Wolf
Yukon authors Kay Deborah Linley and Kathryn Couture wrote books about a kayaking tour, as well as a fantasy series about wolves.
Yukon Dogs – A Children’s Book
Phil Finds a Friend is a children’s book for youngsters. It tells the story of Phil, who goes adventures around the Yukon, to find a friend.
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Fall in love…
Love reading? Your local public library would like to make you a proposal – more free access to ebooks, audiobooks and online learning tools.
Throughout the month of February, the Yukon Public Library (YPL) system will be highlighting these new resources, along with ways for Yukoners to access them, with the New Reasons To Love You Library Campaign.
From the cradle to the grave
Well-Read Books celebrates a lifetime of books with its 20th anniversary and it’s a labour of love for the partners that own the store, which
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Surviving (and thriving) in the great outdoors
You are also cold and you need to find a way to make a fire and warm up. If you have followed the motto of the Boy Scouts, “Be Prepared,” then survival is on your side.
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Murder and romance in small-town Alaska
With over 225 novels to her credit, Nora Roberts is a bestseller by any definition. Wikipedia says the books are all romance novels, so I’m
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An author’s dream …
Yukon-based writer Joanna Lilley has published her first novel, Worry Stones, after 17 years of working on it. “I wasn´t working on it every day,
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John Henderson: Celebrating the Great White North
When he arrived in Yellowknife, back in 2004, with his wife, Serena, and baby daughter, Janessa, it didn’t occur to John Henderson that he might
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For those who answered the call …
“Yukon soldiers are buried in more than 50 cemeteries on four continents.” –Michael Gates Lest we forget … This is why Michael Gates (Yukon historian
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The Northern Seduction
Sebastian Fricke and Rose Seguin share their journey, their “inner compasses” with us as they travel and write on their way through Alaska and the
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The ecological web: A story of salmon caught in the middle
“Nature is not something else, isolated, out there; it is as much a part of us as we are of it, and neither can be
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Herbal passions
When Beverley Gray started her business, over 20 years ago, it began with filling a need for her own family.
Learning from Roy
“When we first came to Canada in 1953 [from Friesland, Netherlands], we couldn’t read or write. I went down to the local bookstore and found this book.”
The Northern Review looks at literature
The Northern Review, which is published by the School of Liberal Arts at the Yukon College, describes itself as “a multidisciplinary journal exploring human experience in the Circumpolar North.
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A raw and real experience of the war in Syria
The sad truth was, you could not live in Syria and have a clean heart. How could you, when you live in a place where you’re randomly shot at and car bombs explode outside your home?
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Putting Canada 150 between two covers
CBC/Radio-Canada got involved in the Canada 150 sesquicentennial celebrations in a big way, starting about a year earlier with an open call for submissions to be put in a 2017 yearbook.
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13 Ways to look at Canada
With I Am Canada – A Celebration (North Winds Press) Heather Patterson has come up with a novel way of assembling an overview of special things about our country.
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Strange things won from the midnight sun
In keeping with this column’s focus on Yukon related material, I’m returning this week to a successful thriller that is set in a version of
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A new narrative on gold rush history
“To most people, the pack ice looked like a cold, endless wasteland that spread across one’s entire field of vision. But, if one watched it
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Human migrations changed hunting
The discovery of Gold in the Klondike region in 1896, brought huge numbers of people to the Yukon. All these people had to be fed.
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Drifting Home covers 3 generations of Bertons
Summer, 1972 Pierre Berton recreated a trip he had taken back in the 1930s rafting from Bennett Lake to Dawson City.
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The Northern Review remembers World War I
Volume 44 of The Northern Review contains the complete list of the papers from The North and the First World War Conference that was held in Whitehorse, and in Dawson City, May 9-12 2016.
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Hunting in the Yukon – Part 1
An excerpt of Manfred Hoefs’ recently released book Yukon’s Hunting History. Yukon’s history, time scale & events are unique.
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Three little words on the same little page
Just for the heck of it, let’s take a look at three English words that, on the surface of things, appear to have a lot in common.
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What’s your digital footprint?
The editor at What’s Up Yukon doesn’t often receive handwritten letters, but there were two on file when I arrived. We’ve sent Mrs. Schorn a
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People who crafted the promise of Canada
Continuing this series of reviews of books that deal with the Canadian identity and, to an extent, with the idea of Canada at 150, we
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A Satirical Race Through a Parallel Universe
Once again I was about to die. Like every other literary artist before me I was about to die forgotten in a ditch at the
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Slap on a Hat, Slip into this Book
Every summer, Rose and her family pack up and head to their cottage in Awago Beach. There, the long days melt into lake swims and
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There’s Always a Stack of Books Hidden Under Their Quilts
The Yukon Imagination Library — non-profit organization that gives free books to Yukon children from birth to age four — is turning 10 this year.
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Memoirs of an Atlin School Marm
Simply stated, the best narrative I’ve read about country lifestyle in the contemporary north and the only one featuring Atlin and the Yukon.
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Yukon’s Fictional Geography
Dan Carruthers’ more recent thriller, Anya Unbound (2017), introduces us to Sean Carson, a recovering widower, who stumbles across a 17-year-old Polish girl on the
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Imagine the Yukon – Part 1
The Yukon Imagination Library — a local non-profit organization that gives free books to Yukon children once per month from the time they are born
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An Inspiring Book, Found in a Unique Bookstore
MacLeod’s Books in Vancouver is a book lover’s dream. Books are piled up from floor to ceiling. Fortunately, the friendly staff helps you to navigate
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Grandpa’s Baseball Book – Part 4 of 4
It occurred to me while watching the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians with my grandchildren – their first World Series
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Remembering Canada’s Centennial Year
I was in Grade 10 in 1967. For some reason my school provided high school students with tree saplings to take home and plant. Why
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Grandpa’s Baseball Book – Part 3 of 4
The kids needed “Baseball 101” It was my duty, as a retired sportswriter, to author it, a kiddie book about baseball(work in progress)
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High Adventure
At the age of 82, Peter Steele says he has very little memory of his own parents. That’s partly why he decided a few years
Grandpa’s Baseball Book – Part 2 of 4
These kids needed “Baseball 101” before their 2nd World Series. It was my duty, as a 70-year-old retired sportswriter, to author it for them.
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A book Canadians “must read”
An attack leaves two girls hospitalized. Two families looking for answers. In the Break Metis writer, Katherena Vermette tells the stories.
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Grandpa’s Baseball Book – Part 1 of 4
2016 World Series (Chicago Cubs / Cleveland Indians) – I wasn’t doing a good job of explaining baseball to my grandchildren
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All Her Roads Lead to Poetry
Yukon based writer Joanna Lilley has just published her second collection of poetry If there Were Roads by Turnstone Press; she says that there are
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A Contemplative Celebration of Place
“To come here is to travel into a past that still intrudes the present.” –an excerpt from A Walk With the Rainy Sisters: In Praise
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Of Breasts and Beyond
Breasts, boobs, tits, tatas. Mind the title, because, yes, this really is a story about tits, but it’s also, oh! so much more than that.
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Chronicling the Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community
I’m very jealous of what Whitehorse based Lily Gontard and Mark Kelly have managed to pull off with their delightful book, Beyond Mile Zero: The
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Filling the Gaps in Our History
“Everyone talks about the Goldrush. I’m interested in the gaps in history. The points in between,” says Yukon writer Michael Gates, author of From the
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Is That Thing Called a Knick-knack, or Bric-a-brac?
Recently, I was meandering through my trusty Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (shorter, as in not quite as gargantuan as the Encyclopaedia Britannica). This is a
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Books to Spring Forward
It’s (hopefully) coming to the last wintery blows before the ice breaks; the spring will soon rush in and soon after we can cast our
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History Offers Timeless Perspectives
Stories are invaluable teachers, says B.C. author Caroline Woodward, they have the ability to “give us whole worlds.” Old stories, too, are relevant artefacts that
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The Grass is Greener Wherever Convenience Resides
“We imagined ourselves free of the hassles and troubles we’d accumulated in Toronto. We imagined a life without rushing, without the subway, without neighbours at
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A Fable of Feminist Lore
“… but also they were a family, because this story is all about that. About humans and human-ness. Fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters. Love
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Bringing Yukon literature to the world stage
Each October, the city of Frankfurt in Germany plays host to the second largest literary trade fair in the world, with 7,153 exhibitors representing 106
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Adventure and Great Powder
Interest in backcountry skiing in the Yukon has taken off, especially among tourists, says backcountry ski expert and guide Claude Vallier. Vallier recently published a
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A Provocative Gold Rush Mystery From the Other Side of the World
“Mannering was in the august high noon of his life. He was prosperous, and well dressed, and he owned the largest and most handsome building
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Double Think Twice
Vurt (Jeff Noon, 1993) A mad romp through a Trainspotting-like drug culture, Vurt features virtual-reality ‘feathers’ that take you to bizarre and forbidden worlds, shadow-creatures
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Modern-day Cartoons for Historical Folks
How to Survive in the North is a graphic novel where three northern tales — two historical and true, one fictional and set in present-day
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Birdie – Tracey Lindberg
“Maybe she didn’t cry because tears were a currency in her life for so long that holding them back meant she was richer.” Birdie is
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McQuesten’s Diary a Historic Treasures in a Box
I have been told the “winner writes history.” Taking this idea a bit further and you might think history is all about battles, economic or
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The Wonder builds up slowly to a thrilling ending
You may know Irish Canadian author Emma Donoghue by the fame she has gained from her 2010 novel Room, and its film adaptation. I must
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Birds and Loss
“His mother used to say the soul was a bird that lived in the nape of the neck. At night it flew out of the
Doubt, Delight and Discomfort
“That night I went through my reprimand sentence by sentence, word for word, and it got better each time.” “I put on a CD of
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Titles Hot Off the Presses
Every December since 2009, Lise Schonewille, manager of Mac’s Fireweed Books, celebrates Winterval, the start of the holiday season, with local authors in the store.
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Humanity in a Post-Apocalyptic World
“She was thinking about the way she’d always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or
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Aisy Doodles, November 16, 2016
Aislinn Cornett is an art therapist, writer, artist and adventurer born in Whitehorse, Yukon. She currently lives, writes and doodles on the beach in Mexico.
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Book Fair Fever in Frankfurt
British artist David Hockney displayed his latest piece here: a complete collection of his artwork in a huge book. The book costs about 2,500 Euro
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F*ck Feelings
“There’s no ‘should’ or ‘should not’ when it comes to having feelings. They’re part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control.
The Threads that Hold Us Together
“Stories are not only words, you know. Words are just the clothes that people drape on stories.” – Brian Doyle, author of Mink River I
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The Sourtoe celebrated as a “Hidden Wonder” of the World
Atlas Obscura, “An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders,” Highlighted Signpost Forest, Carcross Desert and the Sourdough Cocktail.
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Collective Nouns For Animal Groups- Near and Far
A Late Middle Ages hunting fraternity began a game of inventing animal group names. Some were collected in The Book of Saint Albans
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Engaging Historical Fiction
I am not one who likes to read dry historical tomes. I like to absorb my history through the sugar coated pill of historical fiction, written
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Not for Novices: Beyond Beginner Picking
After you’ve picked your first few batches of mushrooms, and haven’t landed in the hospital, you’ll find the mushroom conversation branches into themes of field
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How Two Pierres had an Adventure in the Yukon
Steve Pitt came to the Yukon in 1982 to attend his sister’s wedding. She was marrying Dal Fry, son of Art and Margie Fry. That’s
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Searching for Inner Truth on the Chilkoot Trail
Whitehorse resident Maureen McCulloch wrote her debut novel to bring a message into the world. She wrote the book under the pseudonym, Maureen Senecal. “I
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Celebrating Fathers and Gay Pride
June brings summer and Father’s Day, and is also a time of special significance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer community (LGBTQ). June
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Fresh Words and Deep Roots
Writing poetry since she was a child, Nova Scotia based author Shauntay Grant says she has always loved creative writing. “The oldest poem I’ve kept
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Mark Zuehlke and the Remittance Men
Mark Zuehlke grew up in the Okanagan, hearing tales of Remittance Men – those eccentric British immigrants sent here in the late 19th century by
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